Bobby Holik wouldn't name a (Christmas) song. He said: "Music means nothing to me." When Tom Gulitti of the Record suggested he'd be called Scrooge, Holik said: "It won't be the first time." -Bobby Holik Christmas 2008

“I made a decision to be here. Just because the team is going through a rough time doesn’t mean you leave. This has become my second home. I love playing here. Patrik Elias January 31, 2011

I figured if they are having a press conference the league must have approved it. Then all the comments after the press conference. Lou saying he doesn't like these long contracts. Kovy joking he hope he stays in shape when he is 44.

It really shows the NHL hates the Devils. They do not want them to do well. If the leafs or any other Canadian team offered this deal to kovy it would go through no problem. I am sure Lou and his team will be talking with Bill daly and the NHL and find out why it was rejected I am sure he can alter the deal slightly to make the retards in the NHL happy.

It has little to do with age. Several examples of players in their 40s exist. Recchi's current contract will end when he is 43.
Therefore, I don't believe an arbiter will preclude a contract based upon age.

For Pronger ... 84% of the contract is paid in 57% of the contracts term and has him playing until age 42.
For Hossa ..... 88% of the contract is paid in 58% of the term and also has him playing to age 42.
For Kovy .........93% of the contract is paid in 58% of the term and also has him playing to age 44.
(thanks to a poster on tsn.ca for these facts)

Kovalchuk will remain a Devil.
The Term will remain at 17 years.

The NHL must not like the $550K salary at the end of the deal.
Yet I still think the NHLPA will win.
But to avoid that, the last few years of the contract could be amended.

Recall Lou's entire history (selecting players he knew would not play in order to be able to waive them, injunction against NHL for Schoenfield suspension, Stevens tampering, Dunham eligibility, Malakhov contract)

He's much like my wife, who always says "I don't make the rules, but I play by them"

If I were Ilya Kovalchuk I would spend all of my cash on "potato" vodka and russian hookers. Not too mention the fact his tone of communication is composed of Kavkaz and Tatarin descent. We call them churkas!

Grrrr... one of my friends is from there. He told me all about it. I had a feeling Kovalchuk was too. My bud is freaking brilliant. Just effortlessly. Boggles the mind when someone is that smart.

It really shows the NHL hates the Devils. They do not want them to do well. If the leafs or any other Canadian team offered this deal to kovy it would go through no problem. I am sure Lou and his team will be talking with Bill daly and the NHL and find out why it was rejected I am sure he can alter the deal slightly to make the retards in the NHL happy.

I agree. I'm sure they'll all say "but you knwo better Lou" as if he's held to a higher standard.

Good for the NHL for taking a stand against these contacts - a way around the cap is all they are.

Blueskirt - you can find numbers to support a way for this to go through, but one can also find numbers against this. In the last 7 years of this 'contract' he will make 7M. As it is now the odds he plays any of those years is very very low - that is 7 years of the damn contract!

What is probably going to happen here is that the Devils will work with the NHL to come up with a reasonable length, the precedent of having guys go to age 42 will come into play and as opposed to having this become a circus/mess.

This contract will probably be 15 or so yrs in length, the last few yrs @ 500K will be replaced by far fewer (2 like the Pronger contract). At the end of the day the Devils will probably front-load the deal more so that the PV is near to what it is now, as well as the cap hit. If it is 6 now, when its all said and done it will still be in the 6M neighborhood.

Also - love the fact that some of you defending this were the same folks crying about the Pronger and Hossa deals! lol!

Good for the NHL for taking a stand against these contacts - a way around the cap is all they are.

Blueskirt - you can find numbers to support a way for this to go through, but one can also find numbers against this. In the last 7 years of this 'contract' he will make 7M. As it is now the odds he plays any of those years is very very low - that is 7 years of the damn contract!

What is probably going to happen here is that the Devils will work with the NHL to come up with a reasonable length, the precedent of having guys go to age 42 will come into play and as opposed to having this become a circus/mess.

This contract will probably be 15 or so yrs in length, the last few yrs @ 500K will be replaced by far fewer (2 like the Pronger contract). At the end of the day the Devils will probably front-load the deal more so that the PV is near to what it is now, as well as the cap hit. If it is 6 now, when its all said and done it will still be in the 6M neighborhood.

Also - love the fact that some of you defending this were the same folks crying about the Pronger and Hossa deals! lol!

But that's the whole point. We didn't like those deals and the NHL approved them. We are defending this based on the precedent set by the NHL. You can't just decide to stop accepting these contracts after 5 or 6 have been done.

ok...I don't know much about caps and salary structure and all the finer points. My question is this: Is it possible now that Kovy doesn't end up being a devil? Can he now decide, for instance, that if he has to take less money to play here, he may as well go to LA?

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of ALL Devil's Fans' Hatred and Animosity toward Bettman!
I HOPE YOU GET A DISFIGURING DISEASE AND HAVE TO GO THROUGH LIFE LOOKING LIKE A TROLL, BETTMAN. Oh...TOO LATE!!

But that's the whole point. We didn't like those deals and the NHL approved them. We are defending this based on the precedent set by the NHL. You can't just decide to stop accepting these contracts after 5 or 6 have been done.

You can and this contract is worse than those ones. If you make this contract more in line with the other contracts then the league would have more trouble deciding to not accept it. So the league is saying those other bad ones squeaked through as acceptable and this contract fell on just the other side of the acceptable line.

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Your unconditional rejection of violence makes you smugly think of yourselves as noble, as enlightened, but in reality it is nothing less than abject moral capitulation to evil. Unconditional rejection of self-defense, because you think its a supposed surrender to violence, leaves you no resort but begging for mercy or offering appeasement.

-Terry Goodkind

Sex Panther cologne -- 50 percent of the time, it works every time.

-Anchorman

The best time to plant a tree is 20 years ago. The second best time is now.

It really shows the NHL hates the Devils. They do not want them to do well. If the leafs or any other Canadian team offered this deal to kovy it would go through no problem. I am sure Lou and his team will be talking with Bill daly and the NHL and find out why it was rejected I am sure he can alter the deal slightly to make the retards in the NHL happy.

I don't think any hockey board complains more about Bettman than the Canadiens board. It's like Bettman orders the refs before every game to not call penalities against them I think Bettman hates everyone equally that isn't playing in Washington or Pittsburgh.

Any tweets or anything from the Devils or Grossman or anyone else who might have some insight into what happens next here?

Blueskirt - if I am understanding you correctly your main premise is that if 90% or so of the contract is paid in 58% of the term, all is good. Number are approx...so lets say Chicago signed Towes (age 22) to the following deal...

If this all hinged on the fact that some player, somewhere, some time played until he was 44, so it's possible, then the Devils were dumb not to take this contract out until Kovy was 52 when Howe retired. It's pretty much the same argument as saying 44 is ok, since only .03% of forwards make it to 44 anyway.

So the new proposal should have been 25 years for 106 million with a 4.24 million cap hit. That really should be just as acceptable as the Devils current deal.

0

Your unconditional rejection of violence makes you smugly think of yourselves as noble, as enlightened, but in reality it is nothing less than abject moral capitulation to evil. Unconditional rejection of self-defense, because you think its a supposed surrender to violence, leaves you no resort but begging for mercy or offering appeasement.

-Terry Goodkind

Sex Panther cologne -- 50 percent of the time, it works every time.

-Anchorman

The best time to plant a tree is 20 years ago. The second best time is now.

ok...I don't know much about caps and salary structure and all the finer points. My question is this: Is it possible now that Kovy doesn't end up being a devil? Can he now decide, for instance, that if he has to take less money to play here, he may as well go to LA?

I would say the odds of that are all but zero. He will be a Devil, but the structure of his current deal will change. When this was signed, I woudl bet any amount of money both the Devils and Kovy's agent knew this was a possiblity and had contingency plans.

If you look at this contract w/o the kool-aid, you see that it was for 8, 9, or 10 years. To think that Kovy would be playing in year 11 for 3.5 is a stretch, and you can even make the arguement that he would not be playing in year 10 for 6.5.

You re-do the deal with more money up front thus making the PV and cap hit similar. Personally I would suspect that is why the first two years at at 6 - giving them room to do this.

You can and this contract is worse than those ones. If you make this contract more in line with the other contracts then the league would have more trouble deciding to not accept it. So the league is saying those other bad ones squeaked through as acceptable and this contract fell on just the other side of the acceptable line.

I understand that point and it is valid but when there are no specific rules in place this is going to happen. I understand the NHL taking a stand against these contracts but there is no rule against it. All the recent contracts are in place to circumvent the salary cap.

I am against these type of contracts, but the current rules hardly prohibit them.

Before one decides being for or against anything in life, I feel you must first personalize it.
Say your team has a young Crosby, Ovechkin, or Stamkos -- you would want them "signed for their entire career" because you don't want to lose them.
So the right should be there to sign deals of any reasonable term.

Similarly, there is a point where a long-term deal becomes absurd - but that is based on several factors, never just one such as age.

There is no way any judge/arbiter is going to rule that age 44 is legally unreasonable. Not when there are other players currently active in their 40s.

The rejection issue is mainly because of the lower salary in the final 5-7 years.
And while Pronger will have a similar $ 550-575K salary in his final years, Kovy's numbers are a full decade later.
And we can presume that by 2025, the value of money & therefore salary should be more like $1 million/year instead of $ 550K.

So that is what I see as the NHL's best point.
Not term, Not age, but Salary in those final years.

the NHL didnt say the Devils cant sign Kovalchuk, it just means they do not like how this contract is structured! I am sure Lou and his team of lawyers will be on this ASAP and try to alter the deal to the NHL's liking ASAP. Devils cant afford to lose this at all.